ARMSTRONGISM 2021
Although folks like Gerald Flurry and David Pack have embraced Herbert Armstrong, many of the descendants of the Worldwide Church of God NEVER mention his name. They like to pretend that Herbert Armstrong and/or Garner Ted Armstrong have/had absolutely NOTHING to do with them. They continue to adhere to and preach many of their doctrines, but they act as if they have derived their teachings directly from the pages of the Bible. In effect, they have chosen to deal with the sordid history of their movement by pretending that it all never happened, or that they have somehow moved beyond those men and their failures.
It’s like saying that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had/have NOTHING to do with the United States of America! It’s like saying that Karl Marx had/has NOTHING to do with Communism in the Twenty-First Century, or that Colonel Sanders had/has NOTHING to do with Kentucky Fried Chicken! To be fair, Armstrongism isn’t the first religious movement to attempt to put some distance between themselves and their founder (e.g. Jehovah’s Witnesses and Charles Russell or Anglicans and King Henry VIII).
For groups like the United Church of God and Church of God International who claim to have moved beyond their founder’s failures, when pressed, they will almost always identify issues of government, administration and/or character as the principal failures of the founders of the movement (and the things which they have “corrected”). Unfortunately, even in these “liberal” organizations, the “core teachings” of Armstrongism are defended and preserved. And, while most of the critics of the movement would acknowledge problems in all of those areas, the elephant in the room is the flawed THEOLOGY of Herbert Armstrong. In other words, to pretend as if there is absolutely nothing amiss with those teachings is ABSURD!
Sure, we all understand how hard it is to invest so much of one’s life and energy in something that turns out to be a major mistake. The potential damage to our ego/psyche/sense of self-worth is frightening, and we are not without other examples of this very real phenomenon that all longtime Armstrongites have faced (or avoided facing). On the secular side, a great many Americans continue to support Donald Trump because the prospect of dealing with the consequences of admitting that they made such a major error in judgement are simply too horrific to entertain – let alone admit! Hence, it is much easier to live in a fantasy world that denies or ignores where the REAL problems lie. Sorry folks, whether or not you’re willing to confront them, the ghosts of Herbie and Ted continue to haunt everything you do!
Lonnie Hendrix
